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Described as “at once intimate and visionary” by BBC Music Magazine, Freya Waley-Cohen’s music has been heard in the Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square, Barbican Centre, Sage Gateshead and New Mexico Museum of Art; and at the Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Dartington, Ryedale, Santa Fe, St Magnus, Tanglewood and Spitalfields festivals.

Freya held an Open Space Residency at Snape Maltings from 2015 to 2017; is Associate Composer of contemporary-music series nightmusic at St David’s Hall and of Reverie Choir; and will be a featured artist at this year’s Dartington Festival. She is a founding member and artistic director of Listenpony, a concert series, commissioning body and record label that programmes classical music, both new and old, alongside a variety of other genres including folk, jazz and pop, in beautiful and unusual venues.

Philharmonia Composers' Academy Vol 2 will be released on January 18. Hear a preview here.

Can you share with us your top five contemporary composers and/or pieces?
I always feel a little insincere making a list of my top pieces. I suppose this is partially because what I love to listen to is constantly changing and can become a bit like a false freeze-frame of time, representing what happened to pop into my head at that moment. I also listen in a way that mixes in old and new, pop and classical - and therefore it feels even stranger to separate out the contemporary music and choose some top composers. If I had to pick a favourite composer, I’d say Messiaen.

Where and when was your first composition performed? What was it?
The first piece I had performed was at the Walden School, which is a composition course for teenagers that happened to be 5 mins away from my step-Grandmothers house. They have a festival week at the end of the course and all their students’ pieces get performed by professional players. I was 11 the first year and I wrote a little viola duet with three movements. It was all handwritten and I wasn’t exactly the tidiest teenager, so I think that it is lost to time now (thankfully!).

Any stories of unusual jobs you had prior to entering the music world?
I worked in a nursery school for a year. My main duties were taking three and four year olds, in groups of 8, to swimming lessons, sports lessons and drama lessons, as well as entertaining them with stories, colouring-in, puzzles and sometimes biscuits in between lessons. With any situation including very little children there are a million funny and beautiful little moments as well as a certain amount of madness and chaos.

You're stuck in a lift with three people of your choice (dead or alive)! Who are they and what would be the topic of discussion while you wait to get rescued?

If I had to pick three, I would say I’d love to meet Sappho, so that I could hear her lost songs and poems, Harriet Tubman, because I can hardly think of anyone whose bravery could be more inspiring and important, and Hildegard von Bingen, if only to find out how she managed her time so as to achieve in so many different fields in just one life time!

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently working on a piece for the LA Phil’s green umbrella series for John Adams to conduct, alongside a trio for viola da gamba, cello and clarinet for CHROMA ensemble, and a string quartet for the Albion Quartet which will be premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival this summer.

If you could collaborate with anyone across any genre or art form who would it be and why?
At the moment my dream project would be ‘dance-cycle'; a set of loosely interconnected short stories shown through dance (and, of course, music). I’d love to collaborate with a choreographer associated with a different genre of dance for each story - so those choreographers would be my dream collaborators at the moment - and I’d need to get the writers of the short stories I have in mind on board with the project too!

A composer of music of “high drama” and “intense emotion” (BBC), “at once, ingenious, hypnotic, brave, and beautiful” (Festival Internazionale A.F. Lavagnino), Eugene Birman (b. 1987) has written for symphony orchestras (London Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra), choirs (BBC Singers, Latvian Radio Choir, Eric Ericsons Kammarkör), and leading ensembles and soloists (Maxim Vengerov, Maurizio Ben Omar, etc.) across four continents in venues ranging from London’s Southbank Centre to Carnegie Hall to above the Arctic Circle. His highly public career, with appearances on CNN, BBC World TV, Radio France, Deutsche Welle, and others, is characterized by a fearless focus on socially relevant large-scale compositions covering the financial crisis, Russian border treaties, and more. Commissioners and partners for Birman’s work extend beyond the concert hall to major international bodies such as the European Union, the Austrian Foreign Ministry, and the Hong Kong SAR, as well as through prominent fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2018) and the US Department of State’s Fulbright Program (2010-11). Most recently, he was awarded the 2017 Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize, leading to a season-long residency at the Southbank Centre and world premiere with the Philharmonia Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall, and appointed the sole Artist-in-Residence of the 2018 Helsinki Festival, Finland’s biggest yearly cultural event.

Philharmonia Composers' Academy Vol 2 will be released on January 18. Hear a preview here.

Can you share with us your top five contemporary composers and/or pieces?
I'd rather turn the question around a bit and name five pieces of art from all genres that inspire me. If so, Alexander Zeldovich's 2011 film "Target", the self-described "audio-visual terror futuristic opera" band IC3PEAK from Russia (recently arrested, I believe), the Korean poet Pak tu-jin, João Guimarães Rosa's novel "Grande Sertao" (even in its English translation, since I can't read the Portuguese), every single block of my neighbourhood in Hong Kong (Sham Shui Po), and, if pressed to name one piece of music that's recently a 'favourite', it'll be anything on Toivo Tulev's new 'Magnificat' album recently released on Naxos for which I wrote the booklet notes. That's six, actually - but more is always better.

Where and when was your first composition performed? What was it?
It would have been in Moscow surely in 1993 or 1994 when I was five or six years old, or perhaps even earlier. The first composition I ever had published was 'Birds Concerto' in 1994, for two violins. I'm sure we performed that at some point.

Any stories of unusual jobs you had prior to entering the music world?
Why only prior? They continue. I was a wine taster and consulted in import, I started an online food delivery company in Estonia in 2012 that has been dominant in the market for years, I've written columns for Forbes and contributed to published research in finance and activist private equity for Columbia Business School, and that's just off the top of my head. Life is long, one can never do too much!

You're stuck in a lift with three people of your choice (dead or alive)! Who are they and what would be the topic of discussion while you wait to get rescued?

Two firefighters and whoever designed the lift would be ideal. We'd be short on conversation but we'd all be out to where we really need to be - creation!

What are you working on at the moment?
I just finished a twenty-seven-minute violin concerto, the first movement of which was already premiered by Maxim Vengerov a couple years back; the full version finally gets done next year. It's been a seven-year project that's spanned my professional compositional career, in many ways. And the next is a commission for the Orquestra Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Portugal with two solo singers on the subject of Fernando Pessoa's brilliant poetry and prose. And somewhere in between there are two big vocal-research projects based around Russian propaganda and air pollution, respectively (luckily not all at once).

If you could collaborate with anyone across any genre or art form who would it be and why?
I get to collaborate with some incredible people and am particularly looking forward to a project I can't speak publicly about yet, but it covers film, travel, science, history, music, and art installation all at once with the greatest people I know. Living between Hong Kong and the UK, currently, has put me in touch with a wide constellation of genius artists and thinkers who work increasingly in multi-disciplinary ways. For me to fit into that, and even to facilitate it increasingly, is the best part about this job.

In 2008, Austin Leung was awarded a half scholarship to study at the University of Hong Kong, majoring in Medical Engineering. In his second year of study, he occasionally joined the University choir, which served as an enlightenment and the start of a musical journey for him. Deeply inspired, he started learning and practicing music for around six hours a day. Two years later, he acquired his first ABRSM Grade 8 certificates in both violin and music theory. Leung’s composition is distinctive for its integration of contrasting musical materials in the same work, ranging from tonal, expressive melodies to brutal contemporary ‘noise’. Such a compositional approach echoes Leung’s philosophical belief that the world is united yet also diverse. If the most contradictory musical materials can combine perfectly in the same piece, then humans, regardless of background or culture, should be able to coexist in the same world without discrimination, prejudice and war. Such a message is especially important in this era and Leung believes that music is one of the most effective platforms to deliver this message.

Philharmonia Composers' Academy Vol 2 will be released on January 18. Hear a preview here.

Can you share with us your top five contemporary composers and/or pieces?

George Crumb: Makrokosmos IV

George Crumb: Vox Balaenae

Qigang Chen: Iris Dévoilée

Unsuk Chin: Rocana

Yoshimatsu: Kamui-Chikap Symphony

Where and when was your first composition performed? What was it?

My first composition was performed in 2014 at the Hong Kong City Hall Theatre. It was a 10-minute piece for sinfonietta conducted by myself and performed by my friends.

Any stories of unusual jobs you had prior to entering the music world?

I worked as a technical assistant at a company that sells ceramic glass (thanks to my engineering degree!), which is usually used on induction cookers.

You're stuck in a lift with three people of your choice (dead or alive)! Who are they and what would be the topic of discussion while you wait to get rescued?

Maybe just one... I would like to ask Jesus what he thinks about the recent world (although he had probably foreseen this long ago…) Is it meant to be?

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently working on a commission by the Hong Kong Sinfonietta

If you could collaborate with anyone across any genre or art form who would it be and why?

There isn’t anyone specific that I would like to work with, but recently I have been imagining collaborating with art forms like drama and animation etc.

While music is usually said to be relatively abstract, I see a lot of potential in collaborating with art forms that have the capability of delivering some concrete messages.

NMC Recordings, the leading charity record label devoted to the promotion of British contemporary classical music, seeks to appoint two Trustees to help us develop and deliver our strategic plans for securing our financial future, acting as an occasional advisor to our small team.

We are looking for two people who are passionate about the arts and who are interested in taking this award-winning organisation to a new phase in its 30-year history. As a trustee you will get to put your existing skills into practice and learn new ones supported by other trustees.

We have two vacancies and are looking for:

One Trustee with specialist fundraising knowledge

One Trustee with campaigning and charity legislation knowledge

Please download the information pack which will give you more information about NMC Recordings and the role of a Trustee here.

To apply, please send a copy of your CV along with an expression of interest briefly outlining your relevant experience in fundraising, campaigning, and/or charity legislation, and why you would like to become a Trustee of NMC to anne@nmcrec.co.uk.

Applications must be received by 30 November 2018.

The successful applicant would be invited to observe the January 2019 Trustee meeting, before being asked to formally join the board.